In this last chapter of part 5, Metropolitan Hilarion sums up the Body of Christ, the Bride of Christ, the Conciliarity and Catholicity of the Church, the Apostolicity and the Veneration of the Saints by surveying the place of the Mother of God, the Theotokos in the Church. There is no separate treatment of the Most Holy Virgin Mary in the Orthodox Church in contrast to the developed Marian dogmas in Western theology. Metropolitan Hilarion draws some distinctions between Orthodoxy’s integration of the Theotokos into the liturgical calendar and feasts, the hours and yearly cycle of prayer and the devotional aspects of iconography and the more set-apart, leading role and apparitional character of Mary in Roman Catholicism. In the former tradition of the East, She is a mediating Mother (Mediatrix) that protects and helps save all of Her Son’s children. In the latter tradition of Western Christianity, She is viewed more independently acting as a redeemer and savior of our souls (Co-Redemptrix), and though this teaching is respected among the pious, it is not a dogma in Roman Catholicism. In the second part of the Orthodox wording of the Hail Mary, Mary is described as She who “bore the Saviour of our souls” not equated to a Savior also of our souls. These two important Latin terms form two different ways of telling the origin of the Church and the Creation in Christianity, not merely a matter of semantics or sophistry.
Christian tradition of the East and West have agreed with each other that the Protestant idea that the brothers were from the union of Mary and Joseph is incorrect. Justin Martyr wrote against Trypho the Jew in his Dialogue that outlined the Hebrew prophets and word play within the Scriptures to prove that Mary was the Mother of God and ever-virgin just as Origen wrote against Celsus, a Gentile hostile to Christianity. The prophetic role and typology of Mary is key to remember when the discussion of her virginity and place in the Church is questioned. If she was not ever virgin and fulfills the prophecy of giving birth to the Godman, then the prophecies about Christ too must be doubted. St John Damascene describes Mary as virgin even after Christ’s birth by appealing to the primal sense of sound when he says, “the conception, indeed, was through the sense of hearing …” Since hearing seems to be the deepest sense organ and since the Word created the world by the sound of His voice that was heard throughout heaven and earth, so too Mary conceived by the Holy Spirit, as in the first creation, Christ Jesus. The recapitulation teaching also plays a prominent part in the Holy Virgin Mary’s free choice to bear Christ Jesus in her ever-virginal womb. Eve listened to the voice of the serpent and was opened to many sufferings and death. Mary was hidden from the Evil One and she listened to the Word who became Man, the Creator of the universe, Eve was in pain at childbirth, but Mary was pierced in the heart at the foot of the Cross, not in her God-bearing. The conception that was stainless refers to Christ’s birth, and not to Mary’s in Orthodoxy, unlike the dogma of the Immaculate Conception in Roman Catholicism. Christ’s conception is our salvation and the prophetic reversal from death and corruption. With this kind of typology, Mary’s place in Orthodoxy is not as a “mere channel” of some inanimate “tool” as ancient and modern Christians have argued, but she is part of bringing about the new creation of mankind. All the mysteries of salvation can be summed up in the Theotokos, the Mother of God. She bore not a “deified man” as Nestorius wished to invent, but She bore the Word in flesh, God incarnate. Through Mary and the recapitulation, humanity was given the heavenly Father and God took up a Mother into the heavens. She remained sinless, although she had normal human emotions and weaknesses. Her holiness surpasses angels because the Devil came to reverse the order of man to serve angels instead of angels to serve man. What was haughty was humbled and what was humbled was raised to heights.
Many of the old and new controversies around Christianity and within its schisms involve an uncomfortable connection between the human body and soul, and how God can and did “take up abode in our flesh.” When the Holy Virgin Mary agreed to the Angel Gabriel’s message from God, the Holy Spirit said to have “reposed and cleansed her and made her holy.” The hearing and believing of the Word is the same path all Christians strive to do just as the Most Holy Virgin Theotokos did. She was holy by “pre-election” and she kept herself from choosing evil at the same time. It is the beautiful synergy and harmony of sounds that She leads all of us to follow in her footsteps; She offered specifically her “will” and her “faith” when she heard God speaking to her through an angel. She offers us the perfect example of what freedom means for all people. The Annunciation shows us that God doesn’t force us to love him and work with him, but he does all he can to bring our desires into unity. The Serpent came with coercive, cunning words and seduction. The Savior came with calmness and a kind annunciation to Her. When Mary said to the angel, “let it be” she echoed the freeing and creative words of Genesis “let there be light.” The Word didn’t coerce any woman or Mary, but God “waits for her word” and her voice so that sound reverberates onto sound. This is the real Creation story of Christianity. Archpriest George Florovsky describes the leading up to the Nativity of Christ as the summation of all the Old Testament righteous and faithful. Like Mary, we strive to become a holy temple to bear Christ within our members. Metropolitan Hilarion points out that “every ode of a canon contains a Troparion dedicated to the Mother of God.” There is nothing like that in other Christian traditions, and Christ wants us to hear what she heard in her heart. The silence of Orthodox iconography calls us, such as the miraculous icons of the Theotokos of Kazan, Smolensk, Tikhvin and Serpukhov in Russia, to attend to God with our hearts and ears; icons call us to hear what the next world wants us to know and to hear the sounds of the “spiritual world.” The Most Holy Virgin Theotokos is our best model for holiness and deification at the end of the eschaton (age).